Foster-Children
by hithu
Summary: Elrond comes to terms with fosterage.
1. Chapter 1

First snow:

"_The end of bright blades, the beginning of dark tales," growled Maglor as he heaved a squealing Elros into bed. Elrond turned the page of his book, not yet allowing any interest. Maglor sat cross-legged beneath the window and closed his eyes, inhaling in everything from chill air to candlesmoke to the children's vapourous breath - all to be mixed and weighed in his belly, then spat out in the form of story. One eye cracked open and peered at Elros, who laughed, then rolled around to Elrond, whose back was still turned. And then he began._

And now winter shuddered into Rivendell. Fires were lit, bleeding red warmth. Elrond slipped through poets, nobles, a Man or too, skimming walls where swords now hung in recognition of the end of the training season. At the Great Table, his sons saw him and stood, causing a ripple of motion through the silks and wools of the festival guests. Elrond sat, and smiled to see Estel coming towards him; he reached out to haul the child into his lap, but dropped his hands in shock at the great weight, frowning to encounter a twist of resistence. "Estel," he began, but Elrohir leaned in: "He is already half grown, father."

Estel bowed, touching his hand to his brow.

"Sit by me," Elrond told him, nodding to an attendant to draw up a chair. Turning back to Elrohir, he murmured, "How could this be? He is scarcely twelve years."

His son hid his mouth with a napkin. "Have you never known children of Men?"

Estel's gaze fixed on him, immobile in a face that seemed to change moment to moment. "My lord," he said, "You are not my father, are you?"

He opened his mouth, then uncurled his hand on the table. Estel took it, unblinking. "I am your foster-father," explained Elrond. "I raise and protect you at your mother's request." Had he never set this out? He had meant to, when Estel outgrew infancy. The child's grey eyes glittered, hinting at neither knowledge nor surprise.

A harp spilled out deep ribbons of sound, twisting through pillars and guests. "Glorfindel begins," sighed Elrond, relieved. He tugged their joined hand at the front of the hall. "Listen well, Estel." He waited through the first verse, ears snagging on stray noise; behind him, the hearth logs shivered and collapsed in flames. At last he stood, bending over Elrohir and Elladan : "I return shortly."

He swept from the hall, down the broad stone corridor, pausing on the narrow stair to his study. A breath, then onward.

At his desk he set his head down, opening his eyes to take in Arwen's childhood knife where it hung above the door. The end of bright blades, he thought. The beginning of dark tales.

Midsummer:

_He continued reading as Maglor tipped more oil into the lamp. He did not yet know this language – the matter was secret, fuel for Maglor's all-consuming search; of late, though, repeating words had begun to lodge themselves in his mind, sliding back and forth and combining into possible definitions._

_Maglor stopped pacing. "How could that be? Read back the last sentence."_

_Elrond did so._

_"Look again, child." His hand rose to his lips, as if to force a predatory eagerness back into gentle tones. "Speak slowly; the letters are strange to you."_

_He set his hand in his chin, bemused by Maglor's tumult. "I have been quite precise. That is what is on the page, I swear to you."_

_His detachment shook in puddles to the floor when Maglor lunged forward, grabbing him by his shoulders. "You swear?" he repeated. "You _swear_? Do you have any idea what a vow is, what a terrible collar?" _

_His voice rattled Elrond to his bones. More shocking than the anger was his realisation that he had never thought Maglor would lay hands on him. "Father," he said, aiming the word like an arrow._

_Maglor's arms slacked in wonder, and for a moment he wavered, pinned between too many options. At last he sank into his chair. "Never swear," he said again, then lapsed into silence. _

From his window, Elrond watched the riders dismount: his twin sons, and straightening a full head above them, a Man. While Elrohir and Elladan handed their horses to the stablehand, the Man's gaze shot straight to Elrond's own, then dropped in his customary salute: a tuck of the chin, a touch of the brow. Elrond acknowledged with a lifted palm, hesitated, then turned his fingers inward in summons.

Soon Estel stood at his study's threshold, blossoming. "You have grown," murmured Elrond.

"My lord noticed." Estel was not quite smiling. "I am four and twenty."

"Forgive me. When I was your age, I was still at school."

Now his foster-son was prepared to laugh, if under his breath. "And you are still at school today." He strode about the piles of scrolls, brass casings, maps. He came to a standstill by a stiff hide inked with roads and forests, looming over it like a giant in a little flat country. "This path has altered." He placed his finger on a snaking line.

"I meant to be..." He searched for phrasing. "More present in your upbringing."

"But you were a scholar," replied Estel, the ghost of his laugh returning to glide about his lips, "Of lore and Sindarin. You built a boat of parchment pale in Rivendell to journey in."

Elrond stared.

The remade verses dropped easily from Estel, apples from an unconcerned hand. "Her sails you made with paper twill, with black words were her banners sewn; her rudder fashioned from a quill from gulls that by the seashore roam." He inclined his head.

"From crow," said Elrond at last. "They are from crow." After such a lifetime, to be compared at last with Eärendil felt not as sweet as it should. He struggled a moment with his thoughts. "I cannot blame my negligence on my father," he said. "I, too, was raised by someone else." He had a sudden wild desire to say something in praise of Maglor, and the strangeness of such a thing winded him. At any rate, it was not for this conversation. It would seem too self-serving.

His foster-son waited.

"It is time to tell the story of who you are," began Elrond, "Aragorn, son of Arathorn."

First thaw:

_Maedhros was already on his horse, quenching his bright red hair in a commonor's helm. Elros steadied Maglor's black mare, although he himself seemed close to shivering to pieces. "Take care, Father," he murmured._

_Elrond added his own valediction before remembering how troubling it was to call this one Father. He turned away._

_A snort from the belly, a flurry of heavy hooves: that would be Maedhros, quick to depart. A hiss of cloth on metal, a click of the lips: Maglor bidding farewell to Elros. "Remember me, if I do not return," came a hoarse voice._

"_You taught me not to swear," said Elrond._

_A moment later, departing blows of iron on stone: Maglor's horse from slow step to gallop. Hide on stone: Elros's feet, fighting to keep up for as long as he could. Even had he a mount, there was no holding pace with the speed of Silmaril madness._

_Elrond looked at the night sky. Eärendil's star was far from rising. He lifted a finger, touched the point on the horizon where it would finally appear._

Arwen's return was celebrated with feasts and song, and long embraces. "It was another world without you," said Elrond. "A barren one. I think it is in your honour that the oaks begin at last to bud."

She touched his cheek. "Did you truly notice my absence?"

"Every moment of those thirty long winters." He let her at arm's length, then with a final pulse of his grip disconnected. "What news from your grandmother?"

The corner of her mouth worked upward. "She sends gifts, and riddles. Some of them I have had brought to your study, and some we may speak of tonight. I have had a long journey to consider her words, and so I may be of assistance in decyphering them."

"And other matters too, I hope," he returned. "Many fascinating manuscripts have come into my care, and I want your thoughts on what is written in them."

"I have indeed become an expert at mystery, living in the Golden Wood," she assured, smiling. "Although I cannot swear I will solve every problem."

He blinked. "Just so. Rest for now. The gathering is called for sundown."

He watched her turn and step softly down the hall, receiving nods from guests and guards. A Man who stood to the side saw her and froze.

"Aragorn," called Elrond. When he failed to respond, he called again: "Aragorn!"

Slowly, he to face him. Then, as if with great effort, he ducked his head and touched his brow.

"Come, Aragorn." He was already stepping forward himself, pushed by an thought that lit his brain like straw. "Come," he repeated, taking his foster-son by the shoulder. "There is someone I wish for you to track."


	2. Chapter 2

Berry harvest:

He sits before his old teacher, words anchored in his mouth like bad teeth, refusing to tumble. What could he say? That Rivendell stands half-empty, overrun with noisy Men? That the scrolls in his study curl up to die, written on subjects which now simply no longer exist? That Vilya's great blue eye sits blind on his finger, heavy and useless where once it pulsed with life?

That he dare not go to Gondor, not to say goodbye? He does not trust himself.

Galadriel takes her hand in her lap. Her reasons for smiling are beyond him. At least this has not changed.

Should he tell her they must wait to leave, that it is worth searching for Maglor? But how could Maglor live in this world, after the War has wrung so much from it? Beauty has faded, power chewed to hot void in the belly of the earth; nothing now is lovely enough to feed the hunger of madness, and without that, how could Maglor be? What would he chase?

And if he could survive, where would he be found? In the potato fields of the Halflings? Cleaning the stables of Rohan? He imagines him pinned by the fossiling roots of a reverting Ent, or swallowed up by the willows of the Old Forest. That seems more likely. Or he might linger by the Western shore, eyes red but dry as ship after ship departs, waiting for word which never comes. He imagines Maglor's face if he were to meet him on the docks and ask him in – but that would be too sweet, too strange an enchantment to come to pass in this age. Gone is the skill to heal deep wounds.

Galadriel lifts his hands and speaks. "You may look, before you go."

He is not quite ready to hope as she rises and leads him through the mallorn trees. The basin is clogged with golden leaves, which her long fingers pick out. She does not appear sad. She gazes a moment herself, then steps back.

Elrond grasps the rim, and with a breath, pulls himself down to look. His face peers somberly back, flecked with drowned insects, warped with ripples, but he settles his mind and waits. Clouds pass over him, and in the water below. When the wind blows, a mallorn leaf strikes his head and plunges into the mirror. He casts it aside, but it is still no use. The dark, flat eyes remain his own; it is the same slight shoulder, the same weary mouth. When he looks back at Galadriel, it is suddenly hard to hold back tears, the first since –

She is at his side, arm on his back.

"I wished to see Maglor," he says, choked just under control. "Or my daughter. But the light has gone from your mirror."

"Does it seem so to you?" asks Galadriel. "I do not think it." Muffled by the thick wood, a horse whinnies. "Celeborn comes, and it is time for us to depart."

He tries to say that he cannot possibly, but in the next instant can hardly think how to continue in this new reality. It is less exhausting simply to follow her.

"The journey will be long," she calls over her shoulder. "We may yet encounter what you seek along the way." Perhaps sensing his disbelief, she begins again. "Many more Ages stretch ahead than lie behind. There is time for some to seek, and others to be found."

Many more Ages. The thought is of some use, but bites hard, too. He will not permit himself to realise too sharply why, greeting Celeborn with a bow and his horse with an upstretched palm. The bridle burns cold in his hand. One foot touches the stirrup, and he mounts.


End file.
